


The Postcards

by shouldbeover



Series: The Man No One Liked Universe [5]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: AU, BBC Sherlock - Freeform, M/M, PWP, Sherlock AU, edwardian
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-25
Updated: 2012-11-25
Packaged: 2017-11-19 11:49:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/572948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shouldbeover/pseuds/shouldbeover





	The Postcards

Perhaps John had forgotten they were there. Sherlock wasn’t snooping. He’d never gone through John’s things without invitation since that first day when he’d been just a servant unpacking a master’s luggage. Even though it had taken all of his self-restraint, he hadn’t looked in the large trunk at the foot of their bed. But John had asked him to fetch the heavy, brass Mariner’s compass that he thought he’d left in the trunk. The compass was at the bottom, its weight settling it amongst the lighter things like maps, boxes of flint, and canvas cloth, remnants of a soldier’s life abroad. Sherlock was putting everything back when two photographs fell from the brown baize cloth where they had been wrapped.

They were pictures of Mazouq, he was sure of it, and John’s cramped medical scrawl on the back of the first confirmed it: Mazouq, 1911. It was a blurry silver-tint of a young man in a white Kurta, and slim Moghul breeches. He was shielding his eyes from the sun and laughing, so Sherlock could make out little of his face. The wind must have been whipping at the long shirt for the bottom was just a white smear. The second was more sepia-toned, a studio portrait on heavy card. Mazouq again dressed in a Kurta of a finer, textured fabric standing rigidly next to the standard photographer’s prop of a small table with potted plant.

Sherlock gazed at it without jealousy. He was as certain of John’s love as he was of his own for John. But his forehead wrinkled in puzzlement as often happens when confronted with one you have been told looks like you or whom you resemble. I look nothing like him, is one’s first thought, surprised that anyone would think so. His nose is longer, his lips more pursed, thought Sherlock. But perhaps there was something there after all, in the second, clearer picture, a glint in eyes so pale they looked almost white on the page. Or a slight tilt to the head in the first that expressed a spirited nature. He carefully wrapped the pictures up again and put them back into the trunk. As he did, his gold ring clinked against a metal box. Curiosity overcame him and he tried to open it. It was locked, but there was a key attached to a paper luggage tag trapped beneath it. The key fit the lock and the box opened.

Inside were postcards, about 30 in all, showing men, singly or in pairs, clothed and unclothed. For the most part they reclined on chairs or chaise lounges, naked and semi-erect, hands resting loosely on their thighs or hips, suggestively near but not quite touching their pricks. In pairs, they were generally dressed but with their arms around one another, bodies and faces pressed together, gazing out at the viewer with dreamy eyes, languid, insolent, both inviting and teasing. ‘You want this,’ they seemed to say. ‘This is what you dream of, what you desire.’

He shuffled through them a few times, studying the bodies, the poses. There was one that he returned to again and again. The young man was tall and blonde and finely muscled, naked but for gladiator sandals that glinted metallically. ‘Adonis’ was written on a placard at the bottom. His prick was long and thick and curved to the left.

Sherlock could feel himself harden. He undid his buttons and thrust his hand into his trousers. His palm felt cold against the heat of his cock. It wasn’t that he wanted the young man in the picture. He wanted John, and yet. It was as if knowing that others sought this pleasure too, that others desired in such a way, approved, or blessed even, the love and desire that he and John shared.

“Sherlock?” John asked from the doorway. “You took so long—oh!”

Sherlock didn’t let John finish. He turned and crawled to where John stood and pressed his face into John’s thigh. “John,” a moan of need, desperate and pure. He pulled John down to him, falling backwards, catching John’s face in his hands to kiss him passionately.

“I didn’t think,” John was saying, “you would like them. I didn’t think—” but Sherlock cut him off with another kiss. Sherlock was clawing at John’s buttons, frantic to get to John’s skin, to smell John’s smell, taste his taste. He quickly gave up on John’s shirt and tie and reached instead for the buttons of John’s fly to pull John’s cock free. He’d have let John take him there on the floor with just a bit of spit, but he knew that John would never risk hurting him like that, so he had to satisfy himself with sliding his cock against John’s, but it wasn’t enough.

“Please,” he moaned. “Please, John, I need…” It was rude, it was selfish, but he pushed on John shoulders, his intention clear.

And John obliged, sliding down to take Sherlock’s aching cock into his mouth. “God, John,” Sherlock sobbed, babbling in pleasure. John moaned in response.

It was too much, too fast. Sherlock pushed John away and flipped him over to suck on John’s cock and now it was John’s turn to cry out helplessly, “What, why?”

But there was no answer to that question. The postcards were scattered beneath their bodies. As they moved he would catch a glimpse: the blonde Adonis, two boys in togas embracing—so beautiful they looked like girls, a dark haired youth in evening dress in the lap of an older man, all of them passing before his eyes. And still he could not express what it meant to see these emblems of lust, how they echoed what he’d felt all of his life. And even echoed, he knew, the hidden passions that existed between normal men and women. He was with John and with the blonde man and the boys all at once, and he was all of them with John. He worked his way back up to kiss John and to slide himself against John’s now slick penis.

“Sherlock,” John moaned again, “I’m going to…”

“Yes,” Sherlock answered, and they were both there together, hot wetness between them.

He collapsed next to John across the postcards and chuckled, “More trousers to need cleaning.”

John smiled, but didn’t answer at first, “I didn’t think you’d…react like that. I was going to get rid of them, actually. But if they…help you.”

“Not help, exactly. It wasn’t that I wanted to be with them, it was more that I was happy that they exist. That you want, that I want.”

“That everyone wants?”

“I suppose. If you don’t want to keep them, I don’t mind, but they can be…fun.”

“Mmm, that much fun all the time might just kill me. I love you.”

“I love you too.”

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Postcards from Kandahar](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3118091) by [erebones](https://archiveofourown.org/users/erebones/pseuds/erebones)




End file.
